Global civil society and adult education for social change : a postcolonial perspective

Adult education plays an important role in global economic development and features prominently in debates about changing requirements of post-industrial knowledge societies. This dominant technical-instrumental understanding of adult education in public discourse masks the transformative function of certain types of adult education - that is, the possibilities of adult education to improve social justice issues such as workers’ rights, human rights, civic participation in governance and socially just development. Given the increasing social stratification between and within the North and South in the global era, the potential of adult education to effect social change has been rediscovered by organisations within global civil society, namely international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). The broad objective of this research was to carry out an in-depth qualitative case study of a human rights advocacy program provided by a Northern INGO predominantly operating within the global South. The study analyses how participants see this program in terms of its potential to contribute to progressive social change in their home communities across the Asia-Pacific region. The following questions guided the study: 1. To what extent does this adult education program challenge existing systems of domination and marginalisation? 2. How did completion of the program affect participants’ views of their abilities to facilitate social action within their communities? Data sources for this research were interviews with 19 participants and staff and questionnaires from 28 participants of the program from a variety of countries in the Asia-pacific region. The gap in the literature that this study addressed is that existing empirical research sidelines the analysis of the globalisation, adult education, and social change nexus from a perspective that takes the marginalised other seriously, tending instead to mirror the material subjugation of the South in discursive practices. Social change is highly context-specific and strategies to advance it depend on the way in which people understand their reality and are affected by adverse social conditions. The present study employed a postcolonial framework that provided a holistic approach to analysing adult education for social change inclusive of material, political, and social conditions and the interplay between these from the local to the global level. The program convincingly exemplified an example of adult education for counter-hegemonic resistance against the dominant neoliberal discourse. It achieved this by enabling participants, based on Freirian pedagogical principles, to locate the problem of social change and frame their strategies to address it within mutually constitutive local and global developments and the discourses that describe them. It provided the underpinning knowledge and skills for effective advocacy and created opportunities to build networks between various stakeholders. At minimum, most advocates accord their participation in the program a supporting role in enhancing their ability to examine causes for social injustices and ways to address these. Some advocates even regarded their program participation as fundamental in understanding these issues. Almost all participants reported an increased skill-set that enabled them to become more effective advocates.

Public-private partnerships : a survey with suggestions for research

The broad aim of this paper is to examine and comment on the development of public private partnerships (ppp) in an international context, concluding with suggestions for further research. The first section offers some working definitions. Section two reflects my attempt to provide a first, broad answer to my initial research question, what is the prevalence of such partnerships, taking a historical perspective. Section three focuses on the questions of what are the expectations of government and business in regard to ppp and what is their prevalence in more recent times. The final section highlights some of the findings of this initial research survey and suggests types of research questions that could be addressed....

XBRL : the future of financial reporting and a catalyst for capital market development

There has never been a better time to strengthen financial reporting in Fiji. With increased interest shown by prospective companies in capital market participation, the pressing problems in the public sector reporting and accountability and global emphasis on the increasing need to strengthen the corporate governance structure, this is perhaps the opportune time to consider the potential of XBRL.

Corporate governance and misappropriation

This study examines the occurrence of misappropriation-type fraud within Australian listed firms and the relation between the incidence of this type of fraud and a firm's governance strength. We measure governance strength using factors relating to traditional corporate governance, such as board composition, CEO duality, and audit committee composition, as well as factors relating to information technology governance. In our study, we use actual dollar amount of fraud reported by listed companies responding to the 2004 KPMG Fraud Survey as one of three different misappropriation measures and publicly available firm-specific data to measure the other variables in the model. Our study found that where the chief executive officer (CEO) also holds the position of chairperson of the board of directors, the likelihood of fraud increases. We also find that the greater the number of independent directors on the audit committee, the lower the level of fraud. Taken together, these results are particularly encouraging as they provide support for regulatory bodies such as the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), which place considerable emphasis on the importance of establishing good corporate governance practices. The study provides empirical evidence that employing good corporate governance reduces the risk of the misappropriation of assets.

Using digital storytelling as a change agent for women’s participation in the Turkish public sphere

This thesis builds on the scholarship and practical know-how that have emerged from digital storytelling projects around the world with diverse groups of participants in a range of institutions. I have used the results of these projects to explore the opportunities Digital Storytelling workshop practice may hold for women’s participation in the public sphere in Turkey. Through theoretical discussion and practical experimentation, I examine the potential of Digital Storytelling workshop practice as a means to promote agency and self-expression in a feminist activist organisation, focusing in particular on whether Digital Storytelling can be used as a change agent – as a tool for challenging the idea of public sphere in ways that make it more inclusive of women’s participation. The thesis engages with feminist scholarship’s critiques of the public/private dichotomy, as well as the concept of gender, to seek connections with narrative identity in the light of the analysis of the Digital Storytelling workshops and the digital stories that were created in a feminist context. The study on which this thesis is based saw the introduction of Digital Storytelling to Turkey for the first time through workshops in Istanbul and Antakya, conducted in partnership with the feminist activist organisation Amargi Women’s Academy. Applying the principles of feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis as used by Judith Baxter (2003), I examine two sets of data collected in this project. First, I analyse the interactions during the Digital Storytelling workshops, where women from Amargi created their digital stories in a collaborative setting. This is done through participatory observation notes and in-depth interviews with the workshop participants and facilitators. Second, I seek to uncover the strategies that these women used to ‘speak back to power’ in their digital stories, reading these as texts. I conclude that women from the Amargi network used the workshops to create digital content in order to communicate their concerns about issues that can be classified as gender-specific matters. During this process, they also cooperated, established new connections, and at the end of the process even defined new ways of using, circulating and repurposing their digital stories for feminist activism in Turkey. My research thereby contributes equally to feminist discourse analysis, the study of new-media usage and uptake among non-professionals, and the study of media–public sphere interactions in a particular national setting: Turkey. My conclusion indicates that the process of production is as important as the product itself, and from that I am able to draw out some strategies for developing digitally equipped women’s activism in Turkey.

Speed enforcement in Australia : a changing policy landscape shaped by public opinion

- Speeding and crash involvement in Australia - Speed management in Australia - Jurisdictional differences - National Road Safety Strategy (2011-2020) - Auditor-General reviews of speed camera programs - The role of public opinion/feedback - Implications for speed management

Toward an ethnographic imperative in public relations research

A central goal in social science research is developing descriptive and causal inferences from observable data (King, Keohane, & Verba, 1994). Following this perspective, we propose ethnography as a methodological imperative in public relations research that seeks to develop descriptive inferences about the influence of an organization’s culture on its social ecology. The ethnographic imperative in research design is derived from two interlocked, epistemological commitments in research design. First, a view that the culture of an organization is constituted as a system of shared knowledge that is socially transmitted over time among organizational members. Second, as a consequence, the cognitive setting for actorbased models of organizational social relationships and imperatives is cultural in nature. Based on these commitments, ethnography as a methodological imperative is specifically enjoined when research derived from cocreational public relations theories is explicitly set in sociocultural analysis of those organizations. The strength of this ethnographic imperative in research design is reflected by the degree of congruency between the descriptive inferences drawn from ethnographic data and the theoretical context within which such inferences are situated.

Unpacking the connections between network and stakeholder management and their application to road infrastructure networks in Queensland

Since the late twentieth century, there has been a shift away from delivery of infrastructure, including road networks, exclusively by the state. Subsequently, a range of alternative delivery models including governance networks have emerged. However, little is known about how connections between these networks and their stakeholders are created, managed or sustained. Using an analytical framework based on a synthesis of theories of network and stakeholder management, three cases in road infrastructure in Queensland, Australia are examined. The paper finds that although network management can be used to facilitate stakeholder engagement, such activities in the three cases are mainly focused within the core network of those most directly involved with delivery of the infrastructure often to the exclusion of other stakeholder groups.

Evaluation of green public road procurement in Australia : current practices and gaps to fill

Public road authorities have a key responsibility in driving initiatives for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the road construction project lifecycle. A coherent and efficient chain of procurement processes and methods is needed to convert green policies into tangible actions that capture the potential for GHG reduction. Yet, many infrastructure clients lack developed methodologies regarding green procurement practices. Designing more efficient solutions for green procurement requires an evaluation of the current initiatives and stages of development. A mapping of the current GHG reduction initiatives in Australian public road procurement is presented in this paper. The study includes the five largest Australian state road authorities, which cover 94% of the total 817,089 km of Australian main roads (not local) and account for 96% of the total A$13 billion annual major road construction and maintenance expenditure. The state road authorities’ green procurement processes and tools are evaluated based on interviews and a review of documents. Altogether 12 people, comprising 1-3 people of each organisation, participated in the interviews and provided documents. An evaluation matrix was developed for mapping the findings across the lifecycle of road construction project delivery. The results show how Australian state road authorities drive decisions with an impact on GHG emissions on the strategic planning phase, project development phase, and project implementation phase. The road authorities demonstrate varying levels of advancement in their green procurement methodologies. Six major gaps in the current green procurement processes are identified and, respectively, six recommendations for future research and development are suggested. The greatest gaps remain in the project development phase, which has a critical role in fixing the project (GHG reduction) goals, identifying risks and opportunities, and selecting the contractor to deliver the project. Specifically, the role of mass-haul optimisation as a part of GHG minimisation was reviewed, and mass-haul management was found to be an underutilised element with GHG reduction potential.

Chaos and creativity of play : designing emotional engagement in public spaces

How do we create strong urban narratives? How do we create affection for our cities? Play, an essential part of any species' biological existence and development, can often be perceived as chaotic and derogatory to social and spatial order. Play is also often perceived as a creative force which generates social and spatial value. This paper looks at the design approaches to both chaotic and creative perceptions of publics at play in urban space. Commonly, Urban and Architectural Design constitutes reactive management of perceived chaos, which derogatorily effects our sensory and emotional engagement with space. Alternatively, Urban and Architectural Design can appeal to the creativity of play, by encouraging unsolicited novelty that is vital to strong experiential narratives in the city and iterating environments that encourage the emergence of physical, emotional and cultural invention. These perceptions of chaos and creativity affect the design methodology of professional practice. Tested through the exciting vehicle of Parkour as urban narrative, the constraints and opportunities of both approaches are presented.

Effort-release public-key encryption from cryptographic puzzles

Timed-release cryptography addresses the problem of “sending messages into the future”: information is encrypted so that it can only be decrypted after a certain amount of time, either (a) with the help of a trusted third party time server, or (b) after a party performs the required number of sequential operations. We generalise the latter case to what we call effort-release public key encryption (ER-PKE), where only the party holding the private key corresponding to the public key can decrypt, and only after performing a certain amount of computation which may or may not be parallelisable. Effort-release PKE generalises both the sequential-operation-based timed-release encryption of Rivest, Shamir, and Wagner, and also the encapsulated key escrow techniques of Bellare and Goldwasser. We give a generic construction for ER-PKE based on the use of moderately hard computational problems called puzzles. Our approach extends the KEM/DEM framework for public key encryption by introducing a difficulty notion for KEMs which results in effort-release PKE. When the puzzle used in our generic construction is non-parallelisable, we recover timed-release cryptography, with the addition that only the designated receiver (in the public key setting) can decrypt.